Playing a Part – 15.11 | Pale

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Monday Afternoon

“Good afternoon, students.  I know you’re all eager to get home, but we’re making this announcement to ask you to stay indoors for reasons of your own safety.  There is no danger inside the school and for that reason we’re keeping you on the premises.  There have been reports of suspicious individuals in the immediate area and we don’t want any students crossing paths with them as they leave.”

There were groans.

Lucy sat up, then looked to the window, eyes scanning the area.

“Those who take the school bus will go to the side entrance by the library.  Grade twelve students are being sent to each of the classrooms of younger students to escort them to the door in question.  Remain indoors, and a police officer will escort you to the bus.”

“What the bajeezus is going on?” Jeremy asked.

“Those of you who have parents waiting for you outside may go down to the front entrance of the school.  You will get further instructions, but you must remain indoors until directed otherwise.  This applies regardless of grade.  This process of students being picked up may be much slower today, and some of you may have to wait longer or return to your classrooms if the police deem it unsafe.  All students who would walk, drive, ride, or bus home, and students who would go out to the yards or parking lot are instead to remain in the classrooms where you finished the day.  We expect to get back to you in ten to fifteen minutes.”

A few people in the class got their stuff and left in hopes of getting picked up.  Others throughout the classroom pulled out their phones, and Lucy was no exception.  Checking, searching.

Mr. Sitton was usually pretty intense about phones in class and loved to confiscate them, but even he was tapping away on his.  Gray haired but not old, sour-faced, with a bald spot on the back of his head.  A bit shorter than average, and skinny.

“Local news…” Lucy said.  “There’s nothing.”

“The local news sites only update in the mornings,” Jeremy said.

“ChattR?” Melissa asked.  “Oh wait, I unfollowed everyone I know in Kennet because I hate people.”

Mr. Sitton looked up from his phone as people started milling around, anxious.  “Everyone, please settle.  Logan, are you being picked up?”

“No, I’m not six years old.”

“Then stay in the classroom.  You heard the announcement.”

“I want to get stuff from my locker.”

“If you leave the class then it’s only a few steps away from you leaving the school.  Which I know you would.  Sit down.”

Lucy glanced at Mr. Sitton, kind of annoyed he was raising the general anxiety level of the room by being a butthead.  She turned her attention to her phone, checking a lesser, kinda lame band from in Kennet that she’d followed online in order to support them.  Nothing. She flipped through local people that were linked to the band, because she didn’t have a better way of sorting through local people.

She didn’t hate people like Melissa did, but she didn’t follow many in Kennet either.  Nobody that wasn’t already in the school.

“Nothing on the local PostR,” Jeremy said.

“There’s never anything on the local PostR,” Noah said.  He was standing by the window, by Ian’s seat, peering out at the yards.  “That one post about the coked out stripper guy at the end of school party is still at the top.  Just above the one about the missing kids, which is kind of messed up if you think about it.”

“I don’t understand this phone stuff,” Bracken told Melissa.  “Chatter?  Poster?”

“Apps,” Melissa told him.  “You really need a phone.  Here.  Look…”

Melissa sat by him and leaned into him, showing him apps.

“I think I found it!” Mia crowed.

Melissa groaned under her breath.

“Let’s keep voices down and stay level, Mia,” Mr. Sitton said.  He shifted his weight.  “What does it say?”

“Karen’s Corner, it’s the app the local moms use to coordinate, complain about the neighborhood and neighbors.  I check it out sometimes to see the drama.  Uhhhh… one second, reading.  I want to make sure it’s related to today.”

“Popular girl is a social media queen, I shouldn’t be surprised,” Melissa grumbled.

“If I was a guy, you’d be calling me a geek or something.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Well, I am a social media queen.  Recent update, police car flipped onto its roof.”

“Why?  How?” Sharon asked.

“You gotta work backwards with this thing, sift through the junk.  It puts recent events at the top and messages are really flying.  Stuff about the student pickup, school bus, is the school safe, student pickup, student pickup.  More stuff about the police response…”

“Downloading the app,” Jeremy said.

“A lot of us are.”

“Something about police stationed outside the school?  Are there?”

“You can see them out at the corner of the yard,” Noah said.

Lucy looked and only barely glimpsed the officers before they stepped out of sight.  It was gloomy outside, a light rain pattering the windows, obscuring the details here and there.

While she was looking, she used her Sight, and just barely glimpsed someone in the back parking lot, sitting by a car.  He moved to stay out of sight of the moving police.  Lucy thought about calling out, but they were out of earshot.

So that’s why they don’t want the high schoolers going out to drive.

And if I was thinking about using a connection blocker, it’s why I can’t leave.  Not if they’ll do something at the school.  Who else is going to stop them?  The police?

“There was a whole thing about how our local police got replaced by the OPP,” Lucy observed out loud, as part of her line of thought.  “They might be regretting that now.”

“What?” Melissa asked.  “I don’t get it.”

“It was screwed up,” Hailey said.  “Our local police were too expensive, so a couple years ago they switched over to using the provincial police.  Normally you have the municipal police handling specific towns and cities, then the provincial ones handling all of Ontario, or Manitoba, or whatever, then the RCMP at the top, like the FBI in the states, I guess?”

“More or less,” Mr. Sitton said.

“But I guess we decided our local cops were too pricey, so now we’ve got people who don’t know anything about Kennet policing it.  It’s lame.  They didn’t even rehire some of the officers with seniority and good records.”

“Yeah.”  Lucy nodded, made sure Hailey was done, then said, “So we get way less officers until there’s a problem, then they pull in officers from other places in the province.  Like when they brought in a bunch after the teenagers went missing.  But it can mean hours of response time if there’s something big.  But lower taxes, I guess?”

“Let’s not stoke fears, please,” Mr. Sitton told Lucy.

“The police aren’t going to show up?” Caroline asked.

“Fears like that,” Mr. Sitton added.

“The police did show up,” Lucy told her.  “Just… not a lot.  And I bet it’s going to take a long while for reinforcements to show.”

“What did you find?” Caroline asked Mia.

“This thing isn’t really that useful for handling this many messages or going back a lot.  It’s meant for letting things pop up over days, or you hang out in one topic.  Lots of suspicious individuals.  Bunch of stores closed early.  Two pregnant ladies cornered a mom with a stroller and took the stroller and everything in it, including mom’s wallet, left the baby with the mom.”

“That’s horrible,” Caroline said.

“Are they all wearing white?” Lucy asked.

“Uhhh, there’s photos.  I guess?  White shirts.  Some white pants?”

“Is it a gang?” Melissa asked, glancing at Lucy, who nodded.

“Kennet doesn’t have gangs,” Mia said, looking up from her phone.  “Does it?”

“Kinda does,” Hailey said.  “Some bikers who come and go, small groups downtown who deal, or uh, manage the women who walk the streets.”

“Pimps,” Jeremy interjected.

“I hate that word,” Hailey said.  “It’s way seedier in reality than the velvet clothes and gold chains you see in the movies.”

“What movies are you kids watching?” Mr. Sitton asked, arms folded.

“It’s like, sketchy looking abusive boyfriends taking it up a notch, forcing their girlfriends to do stuff for them,” Hailey explained.  “It’s awful.”

“We all know you’re talking from your loads of personal experience, Hailey,” Mia muttered.

About half the students let out exclamations ranging from Logan’s loud ‘whoo’ to laughter, chuckles, and exhalation of breath. The other half, which Lucy was a part of, were deathly silent.  A few of them looked more confused, like they hadn’t even gotten the quip.

Mia only seemed to realize what she’d said and how many people were clustered around her as she took in the reaction.  The fact it had slipped out did not make it okay in Lucy’s books.  It did mean that Mia looked properly mortified as Mr. Sitton approached.

“In another situation, I’d be sending you to the office,” he said, putting both hands on her desk, leaning over.  “We’ll have a talk with the school administration at the next opportunity.  Your parents will be asked to come.  Give me your phone.”

“There’s a whole thing happening, I’m the one getting the information here-”

“Phone now.  Other people are downloading the app, and even if they weren’t, there will be another announcement to tell us what we need to know.”

“But-”

He held out his hand.

Mia relented.

“Apologize to Hailey, then take your chair to the corner at the back of the classroom, by the door, and stay quiet.”

“Sorry,” Mia told Hailey, reluctantly.

“My uncle’s a cop,” Hailey told Mia.  “You know that.  You’ve hung out with him.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Mia muttered.  She took her chair to the corner.

“Pretty weak effort, Mia, and I’ll let your parents and the principal know that,” Mr. Sitton told her, as she walked over.  “I’d do this another way, usually, but we’re not to leave the classroom. Sit facing the corner.”

Mia turned the chair around.  Lucy glanced at Hailey, who smirked a bit.

Like, yeah, Mia deserved that, but Lucy would’ve rather it hadn’t been an issue at all, that Mia would stop hating Hailey and that Hailey wouldn’t feed into that beef that was between the Dancers and her.

“Bullying won’t be tolerated,” Mr. Sitton told them.  “Be kind to one another, especially in times of crisis.  Carry on, but keep voices down, stay calm, don’t catastrophize.  If there was any real danger the administration would already be taking steps to warn us.  It’s only an inconvenience.”

Bryson asked what catastrophize meant and Mr. Sitton answered.

“You actually don’t have to download the app,” Jeremy said, while that conversation happened in the background.  “Stuff’s on the web, and you can wooble search it with the right search term.”

Melissa twisted around.  “Okay, I’m not contradicting myself or whatever, but that’s geeky.”

“A large group of people, some with covered faces, went into stores downtown and took stuff, knocked over displays, and obstructed traffic,” Jeremy reported.  “There were a few break-ins of houses near downtown.”

Lucy’s leg bounced.  She wanted to go, but leaving was problematic.  Not with the announcement, not if the school might be attacked.

“Are they local?” Hailey asked.

“Dunno.  Came out of nowhere if they were.”

“Lucy, you knew about the white shirts.  What else do you know?” Sharon asked.

“Give me a sec to get my thoughts in order?” Lucy asked.  “I don’t want to make an assumption and then be wrong, or stir things up.”

“They’re from outside Kennet,” Melissa cut in.  “After the highway thing they started showing up.”

Lucy nodded.

“Who are they?  What do they want?” Sharon asked.

“I don’t know, exactly, but they’re religious?  Like a commune, I guess?  But also a gang?  Lots and lots of pregnant ladies?” Melissa asked, glancing at Lucy.

“Yeah.  Really intense,” Lucy replied.  “More women in his group are pregnant than not.  They’re belligerent.  Dangerous.  Even the pregnant ones.”

“Belligerent?” Sharon asked.  “That’s a word.”

“I’ve been reading a lot of old books and things lately.”

“She looked herself up in the dictionary and found the word,” Logan jeered.

“I’d say I’m surprised you know what a dictionary is, but that’s not really how dictionaries work,” Lucy told him.

“See?  You’re so belligerent.”

“Enough, both of you,” Mr. Sitton told them.  “I just punished Mia, I don’t want to punish both of you.”

Lucy frowned, turning away from Logan.

“It’s an unusual word to pick.  Means stubborn and hostile.  Have you met them?” Mr. Sitton asked.

“Yeah, uh…”  Lucy trailed off, then paused.  Do as Verona said.  Keep the individual sentences correct and lead people to conclusions.  “I go for a lot of walks and bike rides around Kennet.  I ran into a big group of them.  They were..”

“…unpleasant.”

“What happened?” Sharon asked.

“They got weird with a woman from out of town.  Got weird with me, really condescending, aggressive.  It took a bunch of us to get that woman away from them.  They were talking about deserving a bunch of stuff for parity, which I think is part of the mindset behind raiding our stores, taking the stroller.  They’ve got some sketchy patriarchal, aggressive sort of beliefs.”

“If we’re talking negatively about beliefs we may have to cut this conversation short,” Mr. Sitton told Lucy.  “The school is meant to be open to all creeds.  There may be a detention in order.”

“The leader I was talking to is apparently ascending to godhood, and I think he got most of the women on the compound pregnant himself.”

“Woooooo, lucky guy,” Logan jeered.  A bunch of the class laughed and chuckled.

“Ah,” Mr. Sitton replied.  “Calm down, calm down.  Let’s steer away from the topic of faith, in any case.  And let’s not dwell too much on one person’s experience with one person-”

“The leader.”

“-at least until we have more than one person’s testimony.”

“Two,” Bracken said, speaking up.  “I know them.  Better than Lucy does.  Everything she said is true.”

“You know them know them?” Logan asked.

“Yeah.  Stayed with them for a bit with my family.  We got the hell out when we realized how bad it was.  They’re dangerous and she’s doing a bad job of letting you all know how dangerous.”

“Let’s not stoke panic, please.  I’m sure we’re all safe,” Mr. Sitton said.

“Nah,” Bracken replied.

“That’s why I went easy on how I described them,” Lucy said.

“People are safer if they know everything they need to know,” Bracken told her.

“Enough please,” Mr. Sitton said, stepping between them.  “Let’s just wait for an announcement.”

“Bracken’s where I got the details I said before,” Melissa volunteered.  “Didn’t want to say unless he volunteered.”

“Why not?” Bracken asked her.

“Not my secret to share?  Because you’re my friend and I respect you?”

He gave her a weirded out look.  “Why?”

“My mistake, then,” Melissa told him.  “What was I thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Bracken replied.

The PA system blinged.  All conversation and background chatter stopped.

“Good afternoon, students.  This is Principal Sauve speaking.  Thank you for your patience.  We know you’re awaiting information and that you’re eager to go home.  Your teachers are being sent emails with details on the current situation and will give age-appropriate explanations of the situation.”

Mr. Sitton went to the computer at his desk, leaning over it without sitting down.

“The police are conducting a final sweep of the area around the school.  After this we’ll allow some students to drive out.  If you can, please carpool, but carpool with individuals you can safely see home.  The school buses are expected to return in about fifteen minutes and will deliver more of you home.  Pickups will continue.  Teachers, there are instructions in the email about sorting the class and preparing them for departure.  Within thirty minutes, we hope to see most or all of you on your way home.”

“What does it say?” Caroline asked.

“There are more details in what Jeremy found online,” Mr. Sitton said.  “They’re describing it as a mostly nonviolent crime spree.”

“Bullshit,” Bracken said.

“Language, please.”

“Bullcrap,” Bracken amended.

“There are instructions to group you all, but if we’re waiting thirty minutes, I don’t see the point in herding you into groups more than once,” Mr. Sitton said.  “Stay quiet, be good, talk among yourselves.  I’m here if you have questions or concerns.”

The idea of there being a way out seemed to do a lot to diffuse the tension.  Students were more relaxed, and they clustered more as groups of friends rather than a large crowd hungry for more information.

Lucy went to get water, then hung back, watching out the window.  She couldn’t see the guy in the parking lot anymore.

“Verona picked a good day to get stuck outside Kennet, huh?” Jeremy asked.

He’s more in contact with her about her life than I am with Wallace.  It sucks so much.  Lucy nodded.

Jeremy looked back.  Melissa was showing Bracken more apps.  Jeremy went from glancing at them to waggling his eyebrows at Lucy, but didn’t say anything.  Lucy smiled.

“Maybe,” she murmured.  “You got any word on Wallace?”

“Nah.  It sounded like things were really hectic.  They’re visiting family while they’re there.”

“Ah.  Maybe that’s it.”

“Sucks,” Jeremy said.  “Waiting.”

“Yeah.  At least it’s not only me he’s ignoring.”

“You have my permission to give him heck over it.”

“Nah… maybe after he’s okay.”

Jeremy smiled.

There.  Lucy saw a movement in a vague reflection in a window.  She backed up fast enough she kicked a chair and sent it skidding a foot.  She hurried down toward the front of the aisle for a better view.

The guy in the parking lot was still there.  It was just a question of whether the police saw him.

“Mr. Sitton?” Lucy asked.

He was already talking to Caroline and Ian, who’d gone to him.  He held up a finger, telling her to wait.

“It’s important.”

He kept the finger raised.

“It’s really important.”

“What is it? he asked.

“One of them is in the parking lot.  The police should know.”

The entire class reacted.  Many of them crowded in closer.  Mr. Sitton went behind his desk, which probably gave him the best angle.  He picked up his phone.

There was a clamor, people talking, trying to see.

“A student saw someone.  Back parking lot- I see them.  Male, mid-twenties, black jacket, white shirt, white pants, currently lurking between a crimson Amalthea pickup with a covered back and a black Boscage four-wheeler.  I’m concerned he might get missed if the police are too rushed about it.”

There was a pause.  Lucy’s classmates talked over one another.

“Alright,” Mr. Sitton said.  He hung up, then looked over their way.  “The principal is calling the police chief.”

The officers stepped into view.

Too fast to have gotten any warning.

Lucy fumbled with the window, saw the catches, and flipped them, breaking the seal on the window that kept it firmly closed.  She started to lift, and she wasn’t strong enough- the cold had expanded it.

Bracken reached past her to haul it up with a bang.

“Hey!” Lucy shouted.

The officers stopped, looking until they found her.

“There’s one between the red pickup and the black van!” she shouted.

Mr. Sitton put a hand on her shoulder, and as the police officers moved, drawing guns, Mr. Sitton pushed her back.  He slammed the window shut.  “Guns!  Away from the windows!  Now!”

What’s been going on that they think guns are necessary?  Or are they dingbats?

But Lucy listened.  Other students backed off.  Mr. Sitton didn’t make it much of a choice.  He went down the aisle, and anyone who was peeking, standing, or crouching too close to the window was made to get out of his way.  Not because he was big- he wasn’t even all that much taller than ‘I look like I was left behind three or four years’ Bracken, but because he pushed his way past or pushed them down.

When he reached the end of the aisle, Mr. Sitton pressed his back to the wall by the window and peered just past the edge.

Lucy couldn’t see, but she could See, peering at the window and watching the watercolor, watching for any signs of violence, harm, or negative emotion.  She had only that and Mr. Sitton’s reactions to go by.

What she saw was concern on his face, followed by a fumbling for his phone.  She Saw swords drop into existence, ribbons trailing behind them, to impale targets in the parking lot that she couldn’t see.  The watercolor painting the sky and background darkened in patches.

She didn’t hear gunshots, when the police had had their weapons drawn.

“There was more than one, wasn’t there?” Lucy asked.

Mr. Sitton nodded.  He put the phone to his ear.  “Benoît, don’t let anyone out.  There were three of them.  I didn’t see the other two.  Two officers-”

He dropped his voice, walking back toward the sink, away from students.  Her earring picked up the rest.

“-unconscious.  Two of the attackers were pregnant, the officers hesitated.  My students were saying it’s a cult.  The ambushers stripped off a police jacket and took weapons.  They’re in the parking lot.”

Lucy reached into her pocket for a pen and began drawing a connection blocker on her palm.

Melissa saw, and moved closer, blocking the view.  “What’s that?”

“It’ll let me escape.”

“I want to come with.”

“Bad idea.”

“I’ll come,” Bracken said.

Lucy hesitated.  “Okay.”

“Why does he-?”

Lucy kept her voice quiet, mouth right by Melissa’s ear, “What I need from you- there’s something called being a blackguard, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a term that people like me and Verona have for assistants.  People who can lie for us.”

“I’m already doing that.”

“Back me up, think fast, cover for me if people get weird?”

“That’s not nearly as cool as what I was thinking.  I still want to come with.”

“And I want to protect this school and do something.  Help me.”

Melissa scowled for a second, then relented.  “Fine.”

Lucy added an exception for Melissa and Bracken, then moved on to drawing on Bracken’s hand.  Interlinked diamonds on the palm.  While she did, she told Melissa, “If anyone asks questions, make up a story.  But mostly… interrupt any roll call, counting of heads.  Or lie, maybe say I left to go get picked up.  If I haven’t screwed something up, people should believe the lie more than they usually would.”

Melissa nodded.

There was a bang outside.  Heads turned.  Lucy hurried to finish Bracken’s hand.  Already, her diamond was fraying.

She tapped Bracken on the arm, then led him on a course that let her grab her bag.

Melissa followed a distance, but stopped at the door while Lucy and Bracken went on.  Lucy hurried down the hall to the window at the end of the rows of lockers, and peering down, she saw a glimpse of one of the people from the parking lot moving toward the back door of the school, directly below.

Her earring let her hear more.  The footsteps, the fact they were spreading out.  One of them banged on a locker below.  There was a tearing sound.

“They’re inside.  Back door.”

The announcement system blared, “Students, please take special care to remain in your classrooms.  Secure the doors.”

A woman downstairs screamed.

“You’d better!”

Melissa’s eyes were wide.  Lucy hurried out of view of Mr. Sitton as she heard his footsteps move toward the door, and motioned for Bracken to do the same.  She had the connection blocker, but in this environment, it was fraying fast.  Everyone was on high alert.

Footsteps were running up the stairs.  Lucy dropped her bag, reached inside, and got one of the chain bike locks they hadn’t ended up using for Marlen.  A foot and a half of chain with a flexible yellow plastic coating to cover it and weatherproof it.

As the feet pounded on the stairs, acoustics magnifying the sound, earring picking it all up, she hurried to the door- hesitated.  There wasn’t time.

Too slow.  This isn’t a pregnant lady.

Bracken lunged past her, and where the door handles stuck out to form a ‘D’ shape, he thrust his arm through to block it.  The doors swung out toward Bracken and Lucy, then stopped, the rigidity of the arm keeping the doors from parting.

Lucy hurried to put the bike lock through, looped it around one handle once, tugged it tight as the man stopped pushing hard against it, then connected the ends.

The man on the other side came running.  Lucy pushed against Bracken, so he’d fall back and his arm would slide out.

The flying tackle or kick drove the doors toward them, but the chain connecting the two doors at the handle went taut.

There was a retreat, then a second charging assault on the door.

He pushed at the door until they parted as much as they would go, peering through the crack.

The connection blocker on her hand was extinguished.  There was a faint and momentary sting as the last scraps of it disappeared, as if someone had just struck a match on her palm.

“You,” the man growled.  The gun clacked against the gap, but he seemed to be trying to stick it through and the gap wasn’t wide enough.  He couldn’t without the painted metal altering the angle.  He pulled back, aiming normally, but Lucy was already hurrying out of the way.

“Lucy!” Mr. Sitton called out.  “What are you doing?  Bracken!  Get back in the classroom.”

“Youuuuuu!” the man howled.  He rattled the doors.  “You’re fucked.  We’ll fuck you!  This is only a warning!”

“The police are on their way!” Mr. Sitton called out.

The man released the doors.  He headed down the stairs.

Going up somewhere else?

She heard the back door of the school open.

“What were you thinking?”

“Stopping them,” Bracken said.

“I heard them coming,” Lucy said.  She peered out the window.  “They just left.  Those three, anyway.”

“Then tell me!  You’re hurt.”

He’d shifted attention to Bracken.

Bracken pushed up his sleeve.  His arm looked pretty brutalized.  The skin was red in general and trending toward purple in spots, and was broken and puckered out like a gross kiss at the edge of the forearm just below the wrist, and it was already swelling.

“Broken?” Lucy asked.

“Nah.  I think I’ve had broken bones.”

You didn’t exist a month ago, she thought.  She didn’t press it.

“You and I will talk,” Mr. Sitton told Lucy.  “Come, Bracken.  Let’s get that under cold water to start with.  There’s a sink in the back.”

Lucy hung back, meeting Melissa’s eyes.

They’re going to keep us here longer now.  To be safe.

I can’t afford that.

She wrote another connection block on her hand.  She left Melissa as an exception.

Letting the commotion continue, students talking to students, she hurried over to her locker.

She got her gym clothes, jacket, and then shut it.  Moving over two lockers, she dialed in the combination to Verona’s locker.  At the bottom, there was a canvas shopping bag large enough to fit a small microwave inside.  It didn’t have a microwave inside.

She went to the girl’s bathroom, then stepped into a stall.  She stripped down.

The tension of the moment had her a bit jittery.  Weirdly worse than last night, when she’d fought the group outside the house with the Family Man’s refugees inside.  That was magnified when she was now shivering in a bathroom that was just a bit cold.  It was like the shivering from cold intensified the shivering from a scary moment.

She changed into a sports bra, the spare underwear she kept in her locker in case that time of the month was mistimed, a gym tee, a spare hoodie she kept in her locker in case of any stain, smudges, or blood from ‘lunchtime ‘errands’ on any top she’d been wearing, athletic leggings, and the shoes she’d bought for gym class.  She finished off with her fall jacket.  The other clothes she placed folded on the closed lid of the toilet.

“What are you doing?”

Melissa’s voice, from the entryway of the bathroom.

“Going out.”

“Can I come?”

“I really, really need your help this time.  Here, not out there.  As a blackguard.  Seriously.”

She pulled the various sticks and things out of the canvas bag.  Verona had them sticking out and through the collar of a fuzzy, striped sweater.  The sweater caught on the rougher bits of wood.

“Can I at least see what you’re doing?  I’ll do whatever else, I’m just curious.”

“I won’t say no… but I won’t say yes either.  You know the deal.”  Lucy unlocked the door and peered out.  “Seriously.”

Melissa approached, cane clicking on the floor.

She pushed the bathroom door the rest of the way open.  Lucy resumed working, Melissa standing in the stall doorway.

Clothes extracted.  Lucy added her own clothes.  It felt important that it be what she’d worn.

The instructions.  She couldn’t have her Lucy self act like Verona, and the instructions Verona had penned and stuck to a twig within were for her.

Lucy cribbed from those, but substituted her own details.  There was something that was supposed to represent the trajectory of the heart but looked like an illustration of how planets revolved around the sun, with a rune in the center for the heart.  Latin phrases filled in all the white space on the paper.

Shit.  She could work backwards from what Verona had done here, in part because Verona had explained it in case Lucy had to fix something, but she did not have the experience in there to draw up a mock version of herself, personality-wise.

“You can read that?” Melissa asked.

“Not commenting, just talking out loud.  Verona said… if she’s pressured or confronted, or if she gets into trouble, this sphere and set of lines at the five to six o’clock position is kind of her failsafe.  It basically says to go numb, shut down, stop talking, insist on being alone.  She told me if it happened, I might need to back it up.”

“Failsafe for a piece of paper?”

“For what I’m building.  A fetch.  We’ve talked about this.”

“I don’t see how that works.”

“It’s okay.  Hm.”  Lucy made some adjustments.  A roman numeral ‘1’ by that orb.  “Melissa, I need you to be that backup.  I’m making this the dominant orb.  This Lucy’s going to be pretty shaken up from the situation.  She’ll…”

Lucy added a note.

“…want to go right home and straight to bed, if and when the situation comes up.  She’ll ask to talk about stuff tomorrow.”

Lucy got her compact, opened it, and walked to the mirror, wetting a hand and rubbing the mirror clear of smudges and spots.  A paper towel got it mostly dry.  She faced the mirror square-on, then began to apply the glamour to her reflection, matching color to color, shadow to shadow, drawing out the general shape of her head.

She tugged hair from her head and touched it to the image.  The glamour ‘drank in’ the hair.  It textured the image.

One of the books had given instructions on ensuring the glamoured expression had range.  Lucy made the first of eight expressions, as best she could in the tense moment.  A genuine happy smile.

Seeing Booker, hugging him.  Wallace being okay.

The expression of the face on the surface of the mirror changed, still filling in highlights on hair and little lines on her face.  Next was an expression fitting a quieter peace.  Harder.

John, in German Shepherd form, sleeping, while I listen to music, my mom looking in happy.

Not an event that had ever happened or would ever happen but it was the fastest way to trick herself into making the needed expression.  If it was off, she hoped this Fetch version of herself would at least not need that peaceful expression much.

Fear.  Eyes wide, face taut, lips together.  She knew she frowned more when afraid.

She worried if she went for other go-tos to generate the right expression, it’d screw her up.  Like thinking too hard about something happening to Verona or Avery.

Shock was next.

Opening the music box subscription and getting extra merch.  Still looking forward to October’s.

Deeper sadness.

Well, fuck.  All she had to do was stop working to keep her expression still and her heart firm and that leaked in pretty easily.  Really easy to get there.  Really hard to get there and not actually start crying.

Things were so fucked.

So totally fucked.

Should she have pulled that trigger after all?

“Creepy,” Melissa said, jarring Lucy out of that line of thought.

“Don’t- yes, but also don’t get close enough that you’re in the mirror.”

“Okay.”

“Disgust,” Lucy murmured.

Musser, Chase, Reid being shitty.

Not a face she’d make in front of them, but they helped her to find the right feeling in her heart to give it the right nuances.

“Anger.”

Last night.  The expression I was making when the fox glamour fell away.

“Wariness.”

“That’s basically your normal expression,” Melissa commented.

“Yeah.”  Barely need to move the needle from the starting position for that one.

Those emotions were a good enough foundation.  Others could be built off of them.

As the glamour ‘caught on’, it began to spread and elaborate.  Lucy lifted the two dimensional glamour-painting of her own face away.  Not quite as fancy as the way Verona tended to do it, sculpting on the fetch itself, but it gave her a starting point.

She put it at the ‘head’ position, moved her hands to bend it, and then let it catch on the branch.

She ran the back of her hand on the rough edge of one branch, then put it to the lips of the fetch.  The fetch licked her lips clean of the little smudge of crimson.

Lucy dug her thumbnail into the glamour she had at the base of the compact, prying out the packed dust, and fed it to the fetch.  Grinding her thumb against the more solid mass, she felt it disintegrate, and let it fall in a steady trickle from the edge of the compact into the fetch’s open mouth.  Dust fell into the mouth, down to the throat area, and then exploded out, finding the shape of shoulders, shrugging and wriggling until the long sleeved top, upper half red, bottom half and sleeves black, fit.  The body filled out, then the legs and arms.  Wood creaked for a moment as the fetch stood, legs still incomplete, then ceased creaking as ‘flesh’ took over and she stretched out one new leg.  She adjusted clothing here and there.

“Good?” Lucy asked the fetch.

Fetch-Lucy sighed, heavy.  “Not really.”

“Alright.  Melissa will help protect you.”

“Anything I need to know?” Melissa asked.  “Do I still avoid attendance?”

“Avoid confrontation.  If she gets hit too hard, or doused in water?”

“Right.  Sure.  How often does that happen?”

“Otherwise, listen to Melissa,” Lucy told the fetch.  “She can help in case of anything unexpected happening.”

“That could be fun,” Melissa said, grinning all of a sudden.  “The things I could do with a Lucy puppet.”

“No.  No, I’m so serious, Melissa.  Don’t screw around here.  I didn’t fight you here, letting you see this stuff, I’m trying, on so many levels, so many things.  Too much of this is hard and scary.  Don’t be one more thing that’s hard to deal with.  I’m trusting you.  Don’t screw with that.”

Melissa’s grin fell away.  “I was kidding.”

Lucy looked away.  She found herself looking at the mirror.  The version of her that wore the clothes she’d had on for most of the day looked at the mirror at the same time, and they had the same expression.

Lucy forced herself away from that look, standing straighter, firming herself up.  Being bulletproof wasn’t just about clothes.  It was about other things, and that mattered way more with the likes of the Family Man’s people than it ever had with her classmates.

“Something’s off,” Melissa said.

Lucy and the fetch looked at her, then at each other.

“Well?  Explain.”

“It’s not- I don’t know.  Just… feels wrong?”

“Is this something that feels wrong to you?  Or something that’s going to give me away to everyone?”

“It’s like… the light from the window.  The way it catches on her hair.”

There wasn’t much, with how overcast it was.

Lucy studied her fetch, trying to see it.

“I think it might just be you,” Lucy said.

“Some of the kids were muttering about you and Bracken being heroes.  Bracken more than you.  He got injured.  This feels like… heroic you?  Vaguely?  Even if she looks freaked out?”

Lucy could feel the connection blocker shifting.

“We’ll have to deal.  Hopefully it’s a ‘Melissa sees things better than others’ thing.  They’re looking for us,” Lucy said.  She packed up everything extra, Verona’s clothes included, into the bag, then washed her hands.  Hands still wet, she fixed her fetch’s hair, tucking a loose strand that had escaped her hairband behind her ear.  She flicked the dangling part of the earring.  “Go to class with everyone else and then avoid everyone else.  Mia’s in trouble so that should help.  Mr. Sitton’s probably going to yell at you so expect that, don’t crumble.  It’s part of the design and intent, here.”

Fetch-Lucy nodded.

“Come on,” Melissa said, leaning into her cane as she turned.  “Tweaked my ankle getting away from the window when the teacher yelled ‘gun’.”

“Get a cold paper towel on that or something, eh?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.  I wonder if Bracken would carry me.  Princess carry?  Or piggyback?  I could do piggyback, my arms around those shoulders.”

“Knowing him, it’d probably be a fireman carry, you slung unceremoniously over his shoulders.”

“I’d take it.  God would I take it.”

Then Melissa was gone, Fetch-Lucy right behind her.

Lucy waited, watching the rate at which the connection blocker burned.  The time window here was probably ten or so seconds.  She waited until the burn rate slowed- she could hear Mr. Sitton getting pissed off.  She ventured out of the girls’ washroom and into the hall.  She’d left the combination lock to Verona’s locker hanging there open, and removed it now, quietly sliding the bag into place before locking it closed.

She checked the connection block, then quietly walked down the hall to where the big window was, stairwell just to the left, classroom door to the right, and paused at approaching footsteps.

The door closed.  Mr. Sitton’s voice was still audible.  He’d closed it so nobody would leave again.  He didn’t sound happy.

Lucy ducked low so the window in the door wouldn’t give her away and hurried past, over to the set of double doors that led to the stairwell.  She unlocked the bike lock, squeezed past, then reached through the gap in the doors to lock it again.  She tossed the key to one side.

At the base of the stairs it was mostly lockers, the next classroom door a little distance in.  The hallways were eerily empty, but she could hear voices, and her earring could pick up way more.

She saw blood on the floor, with bits of glass that caught the mottled sunlight that came in past the heavy cloud cover and through the doors, glinting.  As she walked out, she saw that it was spelling out words, written on the floor.  The two who had stayed downstairs had done this part.

At the end of the lower hallway were two sets of double doors, to keep the elements out, maybe.  It was the primary entrance for high schoolers who didn’t want to walk past all the younger grade stuff.  Wavy glass took up most of the door, with about a half-foot on the rest of the door as red-painted metal, matching the double-doors upstairs, which hadn’t had any glass.

She’d heard the banging.  On that glass door, impaled by a foot-long metal spike, was the head of a fox.  The glass was cracked around the point the nail had gone through, but was too dense or specially made to really shatter.  It gave it a halo.

The headless body of the fox was on the other door, limbs broken, metal spike driven through the hollow metal of the door at one point, the glass at three points- but cracks at the lower two points had intersected and a large piece of glass had fallen out and shattered.  The fox that was supposed to be skewered through all four limbs was instead skewered through two, the other two hanging limp and broken.  A diagonal slash of blood crossed the doors and marked the separation between head and body.

On a locker about two paces away, facing the writing on the floor from another angle, was a housecat, head twisted all the way around.  One nail through the head, fixing it in that position, glassy eyes staring out, one nail through the chest.

Then on the floor, a short message, surrounded by a square.

Give us Ellingson + Verona.

That was it.  No suggestion on how.  That maybe wasn’t the point.  It was an indictment.  A threat, maybe an attempt to complicate and blow up her life and Verona’s.  To get people asking questions, slow them down.

She looked with her Sight.

Yeah.  Something about the way this was put together vaguely resembled a diagram.  The square of blood, the message, the sacrifices, the display of it.

To her Sight, the lines caught light in a funny way, they shuddered, and it looked like they wanted to glow but the brightness would slip away, making lines and some of the words tremble.

She had no idea if they’d tried to make a diagram of sorts and done a really bad job of it, leaving the balance skewed toward one corner of the square, or if they hadn’t, and it was just instinct, latent power coming from sacrifice and the Family Man and the spirits being willing to do something if they ever got it right.

The second one was frankly scarier.  It reminded Lucy of the ritual that was pending.  With the births and the castration.  That kind of event would, even if an accidental diagram was imbalanced, probably pump out enough blood, life, and symbolism to get the lines or whatever blazing with power.  Stuff would happen.

If they’d done one more animal, or if they’d added more to the sides opposite the mounted, mutilated animals, then… she guessed this would be a weak curse.  Maybe general badness and an escalating tendency for death and injury to everyone around, inspired by the animals, until the diagram was cleaned up or someone did as asked and turned them in.  Fix the diagram and make it more powerful, let enough people see the message, and maybe the curse would have lingered even after the cleanup.

Things weren’t at that point yet, but it was worrying that they could get there.

“Sorry this happened,” she whispered to the fox.

She avoided touching the fur, and gripped the spike instead.  Metal squeaked against glass.  She dumped it into the trash can.

The body was harder.  That one spike that had gone into metal resisted.  She ended up leaving it, extracting the other three spikes that stuck through flesh, then grimaced, backing off, sliding the one remaining limb up and off the spike.

The cat, by comparison, was much easier.  “Sorry, kitty.  We probably won’t tell Ronnie about this, okay?  It’d ruin her day.”

She needed spell runes.

She didn’t have pockets in her leggings, so everything was in her bag.  She dug inside, found the stacks of notecards, each bound in an elastic with a suppression rune on it to keep the contents from going off, and quickly sorted them out.  Packets went into each of the two side-pockets of the zip-up hoodie, and one got slipped between the waistband of the leggings and her leg.  The compact was mostly empty, but she put it inside the hood of the hoodie.

That done, she picked up her bag, made sure everything was in reach, and then tested it by ‘drawing’ a stack of cards from her waistband.  Verona had a different system, but for Lucy’s main, core-element cards, Lucy sorted them fire-air-earth-water, with all the things that went in between in between, as she saw fit.  Smoke between air and fire, as one example.

One other stack was light, darkness, and other wider-reaching, emergency elements and cards- most of them ones she’d written as just-in-cases for previous things and then never had an occasion to use.  The last, thin, uneven stack was curses and outlines of glamour shapes, with paperclips tying little feathers and locks of fur to the respective forms- the ingredients making the papers sit askew or lumpy.

She didn’t need anything fancy.  She took an elementary water rune, and she tossed it to the floor.

Water surged, manifesting into existence where it hadn’t been before.  It erased the message.

She waited until it was done enough it was illegible, then tossed another.  To drink up the water mixed with blood.

She made sure the lines in the runes had faded, one soaked through, one stained and waterlogged, like a piece of paper left in a glass overnight.  She threw them out, then slipped out, redrawing the connection block rune before she left.  She’d probably pay for it later, dodging the consequences of the last snap like she was.

Well, it wasn’t like Mr. Sitton wasn’t already annoying.  This would compound that.

Lucy really hoped there weren’t more messages.  It wasn’t just that they’d named Lucy and Verona.  If they kept this up, then there was a dim chance they might start getting stuff right.  Monkeys with a typewriter and the right vague idea… and all they needed was one clear message.

Message fucking delivered, Lucy thought, glancing at the two officers, one of whom had been stripped of his jacket.  His fellow officer was injured, and he was keeping him still, lying on the pavement.

Monday Evening

The provincial police who were supposed to reinforce were taking a full day to get in.  Meanwhile, the Family Man’s group was tearing it up.  Stores had closed and shuttered early, metal grates and garage-door covers had been lowered in places, but a lot of those places were only partially served by that.

This would wound Kennet, Lucy knew.  Everyone would be on edge.  Everything would be screwed up.  Stores might close, unable to recover.  That would tilt things further.

Like Kennet was that diagram.  Things would hit a certain point and then just… not work at all.

The mouse in the trenchcoat carried roadkill clutched in one fist, and wore children’s shorts- in a children’s size.  Only the stretchiness of the fabric made it possible.  The pink stretchy shorts had a tear down the front that- Lucy averted her eyes.  Yeah.  It didn’t cover the mouse up so much as it made hairy flesh bulge out of the gap like a hernia.  A stain in the pink fabric extended to a stale yellow tint on inner thighs.  Maybe because the shorts couldn’t be removed without tearing them off.  Lucy could smell the urine from a good twenty-five paces away.  The trenchcoat fluttered, and the mouse shivered violently.

“If you’re cold then put some freaking proper clothes on!” Lucy called out.

The mouse didn’t move or respond, shivering.

“Are you with the Family Man?”

The grimy, stained mouse head turned, left, right.  A shake.

“Go the fuck home!” Lucy ordered it.  “You’re more at home there than here, right?”

The mouse held up the roadkill toward Lucy.

“Fuck.  I’ve got shit to do.”

She hurried on her way, leaving the mouse there.

There was a sentiment that Lucy had overheard from her mom.  That Kennet survived or died by the ski hills.  If they could hold out, if an early snow came, then Kennet could survive.

But this felt like an attempt at killing Kennet.

She found one of the perpetrators, then slowed down, ducking behind a parked car.

It was an Other, but one that could be mistaken for a human.  He had a bad slouch, and his face had the appearance of someone who’d been strangled until his eyes bulged out, or someone in a cartoon who’d just seen a ghost.  Eyes bulged out and faced slightly different directions, his mouth hung open, tongue slightly out.  He wore a winter coat despite it being fall weather, but he didn’t sweat.  His wispy white hair was whiter than the mane of artificial white ‘fur’ of the blue-gray parka, and his skin wasn’t far behind.  The parka both hid and framed the slouch that made his neck more horizontal than vertical.

She didn’t see the telltale ‘staining’ of a bogeyman, even though he fit on other levels.  He was hard to pin down.

Verona had speculated he was some sort of undead.  He hung around the other version of Kennet, and up until now he’d been mostly fine.  He wasn’t smart enough to forge his own gang, and he hadn’t broken the rules yet.

Lucy didn’t interfere with him, lurking and watching him, instead.  She relied on her ankle bracelet to tell her if she was being watched.

She tracked him as he walked past several stores.  At one point he stopped at a window and seemed surprised by his reflection.

She flicked on her Sight.  The watercolor of him painted his skin a swirling dark blue, which made the whites of his eyes stand out even more.  Colors swirled around the iris.  None of the many swords in him had handles or ribbons.  He’d been injured a lot but the injuries… what?  They had no meaning?

She crept forward, watching.

He stopped at one building, then banged on the collapsible fence that covered the front of the store.

A figure stepped out of the store, bent down, and unlocked the fence.  It was pushed aside.

Lucy recognized the man who’d opened the door.  He wore a long-sleeved, white linen shirt that stretched so thin that the shadows of nipple and belly button were visible, paired with the lower half of a mechanic’s coveralls, the arms tied sloppily around the waist.  Muscular, he probably hadn’t been especially pretty before whatever had smashed his nose three times and torn off part of one ear.  His hair was short at the sides and only a little taller at the top.

That was one of the Bitter Street Witch’s brothers.

There were more inside.

Lucy’s anklet ticked.  She turned her head.

Toadswallow, lurking in the shadows, holding Doglick’s tongue like it was a leash.

“There are more inside,” Toadswallow observed.  “I went to call help.  Doe and Pipes are on the way.  Grandfather got hurt enough he’s going to watch our captive for the hours he needs to mend.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said.

“One of ours is inside too.  Not doing so well.”

Lucy’s eyes widened.  “Who?”

“Miss.”

“What?”

“The fellow with the eyes got her.  They’re holding her inside.”

“How?  She can… slip away, normally.  She doesn’t usually get into fights, or get grabbed.”

“If I knew I’d tell you more.  You’ve been at this for three hours.  Don’t you need to get home?”

“My mom’s working.  I’m glad.  I don’t think they’re messing with the hospital.”

“I don’t think they are, but without Miss filling us in, I can’t say.  They went to the school because they wanted to target you.  They came downtown and broke into homes because they want things.  The hospital has-”

“Drugs?”

“Tall order,” Toadswallow replied.

Lucy watched the business going on inside, trying to figure out where Miss might be.

As she did, a boy a few years younger than her stepped into the display window, looking through the fence.  A lookout.  He turned his head back to say something to the people inside the store, but Lucy couldn’t make much sense out of that.

“If you wait, you’ll have reinforcements.”

“Good.”

“This is only treating the symptom.  The disease needs handling.”

“I know.”

“Matthew said he doesn’t want you three handling it.  I could do it, if we can organize an effective attack.”

“Murdering the Family Man?”

“Cut off the head…” Toadswallow purred.

“I’ve been wondering if the gap between me helping to set things up and then looking away before killing someone and me actually doing it myself is that big.”

“Let’s hope we can wait a good while before you know how big it is,” Toadswallow told her.

The eyes of the boy in the window fell on her, and her anklet went haywire.  It wasn’t one bead that kicked off, spinning so fast it whirred, but the ones adjacent to it as well, and the ones adjacent to those.

“What the-?” Lucy asked.

“Felt that,” Toadswallow said.

“He’s special?  Aware?”

“Something.  Get ready.  I’ll be around.”

Lucy pulled out her glamour cards and grabbed the compact from her hood.  She crouched on the sidewalk, retreating until she was safely out of sight, quickly donned the form of a bird-

The fence slammed open.  The guy with white hair stepped out, slack jawed and fish-eyed.  The Witch’s brother was right behind him, carrying a bat.

She took off.  With a higher vantage point, she could check the surroundings, watch how they were moving, and see if the Dog Tags were on their way.

Lucy ascended to rooftop level, blinked to clear her eyes and let the residual glamour sink in and give her a bird’s eyesight, and saw the white-haired man fade out of existence, definition blurring, body reduced to a painter’s streaks of white and light blue.  More like she’d gotten lint in those colors stuck in her eye and her eye couldn’t focus on it.

Then nothing.

One of Guilherme’s lessons about fighting Fae came to mind.  If you face the unpredictable, don’t be predictable.

She sharply changed direction.

He was there.  Half-blurry, on the rooftop, one hand reaching out for her.  His hand closed into a fist in the spot he’d just been in.

She shifted direction again, ducking for a place out of his view.

It didn’t matter.  He’d locked onto her somehow and now he chased.  A hand shoved its way through a window, groping for her.  He leaped from the outside of a fire escape to a low rooftop, reaching for her.  It felt like there was only a second between each manifestation.

She flew higher, out of reach of any of his appearances.  She saw a few blurs appearing at once, like he was ready to be there, then they all faded.

He walked across a rooftop, staring up at her with one bulging eye, head angled so the eye would focus on her.  One of his hands bled from the window, but it didn’t look like it was bleeding much at all.

His mouth yawned open to twice the extent it should be able to, and the interior of his mouth yawned open as well.  In the darkness there, her glamoured bird’s eye could see seven human eyes, as bright as if they were in daylight, peering out of the darkness within.

Her feathers fluttered with turbulence that wasn’t in the air.  She turned, swooping, putting more distance between them, and the fluttering stopped.

He turned away, back toward the store, shoving bleeding hand and his other hand into the pockets of his winter coat.  He blurred.

Only to turn his head slightly at the last second.  His eye bulged out enough that it could rotate around and, with the slight turn of his head, look past his temple and up at her.

Shit.  She flapped madly, tilting her body and tail-

He disappeared.  A hand seized her out of the air, gripping her entire body.  A cold hand.

They dropped a good twenty or thirty feet, landing on a third floor rooftop below.  He took most of the impact, but it radiated through him and jarred her enough that most of the glamour broke away, feathers scattering.  Lucy was gripped around the neck.

His mouth yawned open, eyes staring.  He shook her, hard, and the rest of the glamour came away.  The eyes widened, or got larger, maybe.

She kicked, punched, scratched, and he didn’t care.  He didn’t feel pain.  He closed his mouth.

He walked to the rooftop’s edge.

Cold gripped her, starting at the toes and reaching up.  It didn’t feel like winter cold.  It didn’t feel like anything of that sort she was used to.  It felt like she imagined space would feel like.  Less of the cold pressing in, and more of something vast and dark and unable to bear warmth pulling that warmth out of her and getting not even a sliver of a percent warmer as a result.

The cold gripped her, her thoughts stuttered-

And they were on the road near the store.

“Nice,” the Witch’s brother said.  “You going to get the prize?”

The man with white hair shrugged.  Lucy found her strength again and struggled.

“Can I have it?” the Witch’s brother asked.

“We, not just you,” the boy said.  There were three more inside.  “We split it.  This was all of us.”

Lucy reached into the left pocket of her hoodie, pried a thumb inside to get enough leverage to pull out a curse card, and slapped it onto the white-haired man’s arm, and dug fingernails in around it.

“I curse you-” she glanced at the card.  “-by Phobos, let worry become apprehension, let apprehension become fear, and let fear become terror.  Nightmares brought-”

The white-haired man shook her violently.  She grit her teeth, hands gripping his wrist, because being carried by the neck was awful.

The card fell away.

A spider crawled from the sleeve of his jacket onto his hand.  It paused.

“Fuck!”

It leaped onto Lucy’s face.  She screwed her eyes shut, face turned away, mouth pressed closed.

She felt more tickling the skin of the sides of her face.  One felt like it was the size of her hand.  It crawled past her collar to her shoulder.  She writhed, still hanging off the white haired man’s arm with both hands at his wrist, trying to pull the shoulder of her hoodie and tee tight enough to squish the fucking freaking thing.  Instead, she felt it bite her.

Nightmares brought to life.

There was a snicker from elsewhere in the room.

Growling, Lucy swung by her grip on the white-haired man, got her leg up enough to press it against his side, and then walked up his side, until she could wrap her legs around, knees at his shoulder, her body hugging his arm.

More spiders nipped her.  They crawled through her hair.

She let go with one hand, reached for the curse and glamour cards again, and slapped the deck against his arm.  With one hand still gripping his wrist, she extended finger, caught the edge of a card, and-

-and nearly dropped everything and lost her grip when a spider reached her nostril, legs like needles in skin, poised there.  She shook her head hard, and it did nothing to dislodge the spider.

It entered her nose, pricking the inside of her nostril, stirring her nose hairs.  She snorted, and she had no idea if it got the spider out.

The prickling resumed.  It hadn’t got the spider out.

She screamed, half a scream of rage, half because she had to do something about this, and she pried the card free, quickly shoving the packet of cards back into a pocket.  Hand on the card, with a glimpse to make sure it was the right one, she told him- “I curse-”

A spider crawled into her mouth. She spat, and as her lips touched, they got stuck at the corner, caught on sticky webbing.

“I curse you with weakness.  Suffer ailment without ill to define it, without cure, without relent.  Let the fates see you brought low, you brute.  As Clotho spins, let your head spin.”

He shook her hard.  Her legs around his shoulder helped keep her from getting jostled too much.  She kept her hand in place, holding the card there.  He gripped her arm, and she dug fingernails in until it felt like they’d get pried off the ends of her fingers.  Which she would’ve preferred to having the tickle of a hundred spiders all over her skin and in her hair.  Stings and pinches of bites every few seconds.

“As Lachesis disposes, let that strength you have earned fall away.  As Atropos-”

The Witch’s Brother came for her.  Trying to cover her face and mouth.  She twisted around, felt a spider on her eyelid, like it was trying to get at her eye.

He blocked her mouth imperfectly.  She bit him, hard.  He released her, and she cried out the final line.

“As Atropos holds rigid, let muscle atrophy, never to return!”

She pulled her hand away and spat on the card.

She was dropped, and had to catch the white-haired man’s pant leg to stop from falling head-first, with the way her legs were around his shoulder.

She landed awkwardly on the ground, scrambled to get the first curse, and grabbed it off the ground.

“While you’re at it, you can have this, with a side of extra fuck you, I decided I don’t want it,” she told him.  She reached for him- he reached back, ready to grab her, and he swayed.

She pressed it to his back.  “And anyone who wants to take it off you can have it instead.”

The one hundred and fifty spiders on her promptly died.  Her entire body shivered, not just with relief, but with the various poisons that had been taking hold now falling away.

She quickly backed up to the door, with the open security fence that hadn’t been closed behind them.  She stepped back onto the sidewalk, watching.  The Witch’s brother held his bleeding hand.  The lookout kid hung back.  Another two were advancing, unsure.

In the very back corner, Miss got slowly to her feet.  Her sweater was bloody, and her head hung, hair blocking the view of her face.  Hands clutched her top up near the collar, hidden by the curtain of hair, but still pulling at fabric.  She started to stagger toward the back door.

Lucy needed to get their attention.  Spell card.

Something elementary.  To confound.  She dug for the right card, pulling it free.  The runework flared.

Smoke was good.

She went to throw it-

And a hand seized her wrist and hand.

The white-haired man.

He wasn’t as strong as he had been.  He couldn’t carry her with her legs dangling.  He breathed hard, but he was about as strong as a regular adult, and he was capable of hauling on her arm, pulling her from a standing position to a hard fall on the ground, just barely managing to avoid her chin colliding with sidewalk.

He’d held onto the card.  Mouth yawned open, eyes visible in that darkness.

The rune on the card was snuffed out.

He kept his mouth open, holding his arm out in front.

The paper fluttered.

Shit, don’t send it back, don’t send it back.

The rune was snuffed out.  The paper fell away.  One eye inside his mouth underwent a sort of mitosis, splitting in two.

He eats practice?

“She’s getting away!” the kid shouted.

He wasn’t talking about Lucy.  Miss.

Lucy hoped Miss could get away.  This asshole might’ve been countering her ability to move the same way he had Lucy’s bird form.  Escape, and there he was.  And he only had to get a good grip on someone once.

Doe seemed to appear out of nowhere, quick and low enough to the ground on her advance that Lucy hadn’t seen her.  Plunging a knife into the white-haired man’s lower back.

He shoved Doe hard into the security grate.

Pipes lifted a gun- and it was one Verona might’ve fixed for him, because there was a paper wrapped around the barrel.

“Watch out!” Lucy called out.

The white-haired man disappeared.  Grabbing the barrel.  He punched Pipes, and Pipes punched him back.  Made of tougher stuff.

But stab wounds and punches weren’t doing anything.  He didn’t feel pain and he didn’t slow down.

Use practice and he eats it.  Use weapons and he doesn’t feel it.

Lucy coughed, rubbing at her neck.  Dead spiders fell away with every movement of her head, making it really hard to breathe without feeling like she might throw up if she didn’t tightly control her throat.  There were more under her clothes, all curled up.

Binding?  She could use chalk, but that was such a long shot.

In the ongoing exchange of blows between Pipes and the white-haired man, Pipes was gradually getting weaker, and the white-haired man didn’t seem to care.

He turned his head, blurred, and disappeared.

He rose from a crouching position on the far side of a grouping of cars parked in front of an apartment building.  Doglick savaged one of his arms, and his other arm held Toadswallow, who dropped the remnants of whatever item he’d just been about to use.

He hucked Toadswallow into the narrow alley with the arm of a football player throwing downfield, grabbed Doglick, and smashed the goblin into the side of a building.

“Fuck.  What do we do?” Lucy asked.

“That’s supposed to be your job,” Pipes said, groaning as he got to his feet.

The side of Doe’s head was healing.  Lucy hadn’t realized the damage was that bad.

Just past Doe, Lucy could see the Witch’s brother lingering.  He turned to go after Miss.

“I don’t have any great stuff for binding.”

“Love that,” Pipes said, grunting.  “That’s a good way to go, usually.  So now what?”

The white-haired man was approaching.  He reached the cars and paused.  Staring into the window.

He smashed it.  He turned, then smashed the side-view mirror.

Is that the nightmare curse?

“Could make curses and stick them on him, but I’d have to get them in places he can’t reach to eat them… I kind of think he’d pound us into the ground before we got that far.”

The white-haired man finished breaking the mirrors and glass.  He looked across the street, then opened his mouth.

The spell cards Lucy was carrying started to jitter and move.  The bracelet at her ankle did too, but not as much.

She stepped back, grabbing the packets of cards quickly and pressing them closer to her heart.  At the Blue Heron, they’d learned about claim, and it seemed that making her ownership clear and keeping the cards close to her helped save them.  Otherwise he might’ve tried eating them from a distance.

They’re mine, you can’t eat them, basically.

“Doe?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Go help Miss?  There’s a group.  Kid has special awareness or something.  The guy’s the Witch’s second oldest brother.”

Doe ran off.

“So that’s a thing,” the large Dog Tag told Lucy.  “We can’t figure out how to deal with this guy with the three of us, so why not send away one of us, huh?”

“Might make a difference to Miss.  She’s hurt.  Not sure it’ll make a difference here.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I always gripe at orders, loudly, but I follow ’em.  You call the shots.”

“Still feel weird about that.  Any idea where Matthew is?  I don’t know if we could really use the Doom downtown, but I can’t think of much else that’d work.”

“He’s dealing with a much bigger group at the other end of downtown.  Last I heard, he was going indoors to where he could use the Doom.  Bracken’s with him, got a healing from Tash, arm mended.”

Lucy nodded.

The white-haired man resumed moving, crossing the street.  The heavyset, tall Pipes broke into a run, meeting him halfway.  He succeeded in bowling over the Other.

Expecting me to figure this out?  Lucy thought.

She sorted through curses.

Two more that’d work.  One for ‘loss of precious things’, in case he had something on him that was conferring power.  It was meant to make people lose things they carried or be disarmed of weapons more easily.  Another was a madness curse that made enemies appear where there weren’t any, especially making friend appear to be foe.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

Lucy exhaled a shuddering breath.

“Verona, Verona, Verona!” she called out.

“She’s here!?” Pipes bellowed.  He was wrestled to the ground.

“She’s close!” Lucy called out.  “Paranoia binding, tighten the noose, lay this curse, backstabber’s false truce.  Friends few, thirty pieces seduce.  Enemies many, phantom madness induced!”

She ran up as she called it out, felt her ankle bracelet tick.

At the window.  Someone watched.

In desperation, Lucy waved at them to go away.  They turned, leaving.

Maybe to call the police.

Can’t let Verona see me sucking.  Gotta do this right.  This would be a hell of a one to get stuck on me at the wrong moment.

The white-haired man turned to face her, pulling away from Pipe.

“You leave her be!” Pipes boomed, top of his lungs.  He wrapped legs around waist and arms around shoulder, bear-hugging the white-haired man.  With his mass, it slowed the man down.

Long enough for Lucy to tag him, a second curse laid.

Verona rounded the corner.

“Holy shit, right in the middle of the street!?” Verona called out.

“Most stuff is closed!”

The white-haired man wrestled Pipes away, sat up, then managed to stand.  Pipes kept his legs wrapped around the man’s waist, but he was strong enough to manage despite.

“What do we do?  Have you figured out this guy yet?”

“No, I really haven’t.”

“Is he undead?” Verona asked.

“I don’t think.  I think he’s like some… spirit eating bullcrap.  He eats practice.  I’d bind him, but I don’t have the stuff.  I’d lay more curses on him, but it’s pretty shaky.  He sent one back at me earlier.”

“How many have you stuck on him?”

“Three.  He ate one.  I think I’m two for three.  Right now he’s got a nightmare curse, he hates seeing his reflection, really screws him up, and a paranoia curse.  Which-”

He grabbed for thin air, staggered, and looked bewildered.

“-that.”

“I’ve got the stuff for binding,” Verona told Lucy.  “Tons of it, actually.”

The white-haired man turned to look at Verona.

He flinched, then grabbed again for the air.

There seemed to be a moment of thought, after, where he wasn’t looking at anything particular, and then he broke into a run.  Toward where Miss and Doe had gone.

Lucy let herself relax.  She reached down to help Pipes up, realized that anything she’d do would be ineffectual, and gave up.  She let him work his way to his feet, and quickly walked off toward the shop, peering inside.  At the very least, she wanted to not be in the middle of the street where every person in nearby apartments could look down.

Not that there were many.  The bracelet barely ticked.  She had to check the runes hadn’t been sucked off.

She looked at Verona.

Verona didn’t look recharged.  She looked like she needed about thirteen more days like the one she’d just had with her mom.

“I guess he heard me?” Verona asked.

“Not smart enough to run a gang, but smart enough to know to run from you,” Lucy said.

“God, I missed you,” Verona said.  “What the hell, Luce?  The entire way here I was telling myself on and off that I gotta meet you with a super hug and tell you I love you and then I show up and you look like utter shit.”

“Wow, Ronnie.”

“Just awful.  Bedraggled.  Exhausted.  I’d want to hug you anyway, but if I do that, then what was I telling myself to do in the car ride?  It’s an entirely different hug.  I can’t double-hug you, can I?”

Lucy put her arms out.

Verona hugged her.

“Aw,” Pipes said.

“Ruining the moment, big guy,” Verona told him.

“It’s an aw moment.  Saying it’s what it is doesn’t ruin it.”

“We should help Miss,” Lucy said.  “If that guy gets after her again…”

“He got her?”

“Yeah.”

The hug ended.  They jogged down the alley, trying to figure out which course Miss might have taken.

Lucy’s Sight let her see the drips of blood from the hand of the Witch’s brother.  That helped a lot.

Up until they found him.

The white-haired man had apparently gone this same way.  Suffering from the curse.

The Witch’s brother was slumped against the wall, nose smashed, mouth a mess of blood.  The back of his head bled.

It looked like he’d been smashed into a nearby brick wall.

“Pipes!” Lucy called out.

“Yeah.  I’ll grab him.”

Lucy looked around, searching.  There was some fallen trash at the end of one fork in the alley, but nothing telling.  No occasional blood drop to highlight that they’d picked the right path to search down.

“He’s gone.”

Miss stepped around the corner, then leaned against the wall.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked.

“Physically, insofar as I’m physical, I’ll mend.  Otherwise… I haven’t felt quite so dejected since Summer’s end.”

“Don’t go disappearing on us for another few weeks,” Lucy told her.

“I don’t think we can afford for me to do that, regardless.  How was Avery?”

“Oh, you’re asking me,” Verona replied.  “Pretty good?  Wish I’d been able to do more in the limited time I had there.”

“Did she let the Lost free?”

“The Tearaway Kid, the car song, Ratko the Wrongdoer, and Queen Sootsleeves.”

“None I’m familiar with.  Will they be good to her?”

“Some will.  Others are doing their own thing.”

“Good,” Miss said.  “At the end of summer I had to come to terms with the fact my dream for Kennet might be ruined by the actions of a short-sighted, manipulative few.  Today, I worry the dream may have been defiled while it lays dead and fallow.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy told her.

“As am I, Lucy,” Miss replied.  “In more ways than one.  This will be hard to salvage.  At this stage, even if we remove the Family Man, others may pick up where he left off.  My assailant may be one.”

“I think I’ve got an idea on next moves though, if that helps?  Except…” Lucy trailed off.

“Except?” Verona asked.

“I think you’d have to let go of something else you’ve been holding onto.  We might need a council meeting for this.  And we should call the Bitter Street Witch in as part of it.”

“Going to run it by us first?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Are you up for this?  I hate to ask when you just arrived…”

“Depends on what you’re asking.”

“I’d be asking you to come with me, let me help with Undercity stuff… I really did postpone things so I could double check with you.”

“What are we doing in the Undercity?”

“We’d be getting mean.”

“See, I just went over the hug thing, sitting in the car, thinking about hugging you and telling you I love you, and then you went and ruined the sentiment of it by needing a hug for totally different reasons.  Now you’re screwing up the ‘love you’ part because I want to tell you I love you for entirely different reasons.”

“Seriously though.  I know the Undercity is your thing, but-”

“But I decided to foist it off on you so I could spend time with my mom and recharge.  I don’t even know what I’m doing with myself anymore.  But if you’ve got a plan… if it’s got impact, if we can put a dent in this?  I love you for that.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I think it’ll put a dent in things.”

Tuesday, First Thing

Matthew’s Doom slammed through about twenty people, then pushed a car that had just started, headlights illuminating a garage door.  The car was smashed into the door a moment later, front crumpling, headlights shattering and going dark.

The three Dog Tags went in first.  The guns were silent, thanks to runes.  The shots, if the Dog Tags were following instructions, were meant to wound.  As much as a gunshot could ever truly be a ‘shoot to wound’.  People died from all sorts of things.

Felt better that way, anyway.  Not just that they weren’t killing, but that this made more of an impact.  Lucy harbored suspicions that the move against the school and the shit-stirring and robberies downtown had been because the Family Man had needed to make a statement.  Because they’d delivered all of the flunkies he’d sent at the refugee house back to the undercity.  Some had crawled away.  People who still needed to eat, who reported an embarrassing loss.  Who were symbols of a failed effort.

There was a good chance this could be more escalation.  Lucy wasn’t sure what that would look like, but here it was.

Let’s hope plans didn’t change and that the white-haired guy isn’t around.

Pipes and Doe cleared the ground floor, circling around.

Grandfather led the way up the stairs.  He checked all sorts of rooms, fired twice at two different doors, then stopped short of the last.

Lucy listened.

“Something crashed.”

“Something crashed, my dear, and there are footsteps in the house at an unusual hour.”

Lucy heard the clicks and metal-on-metal sounds of a gun being loaded, slide pulled back  She motioned at Verona, who nodded.

“The Witch?” the Family Man called out.  He opened the door.

Grandfather shot him.  The Family Man slumped against the frame.

He was shirtless, wearing linen sleep pants.  Too many muscles stood out beneath skin, like some parody of masculinity, but it only got worse.  Where muscles rose and fell in hills and valleys, the valleys swelled, new strands emerging, swelling, and taking up space.  The flesh wound of the bullet was buried in a cruller donut of bulging flesh, and then the flesh receded.

He lifted the handgun he carried and shot Grandfather.

Lucy and Verona crouched on the stairs, protected only barely by the railing.  They wore their masks.

“Ah, both of you.  Wearing the masks I heard about, too.  Did you like my art display?”

“You or your people killed a kitty,” Verona told him.  “So I want to look you in the eye before you realize what a horrible mistake that was.”

She pushed her mask up.

On Verona’s cheekbones, just below her eyes, were marks.  The Gate of Horn.  One of Avery’s practices.  A way of sharing what one saw or Saw, like they’d used on the promenade.

“Whatever that is, I don’t think it works.”

“It lets Matthew see right where you’re standing and that the coast is clear down the hall.”

The Doom came, in through the bedroom window, through the bedroom door, and down the hall.  It slammed into the Family Man, carrying him all the way to the far end of the house.

There, it stopped.  The oily blackness of it consolidated briefly into a macabre version of Edith, then it receded.

Lucy walked the rest of the way up the stairs, pausing for a second to crouch by Grandfather.  Verona flipped her mask back down.

The bindings of stick and twine signaled the local spirits.  Lucy laid one flat on the ground, then tapped it three times.

The Family Man was broken and twisted, but his flesh was fluid.  His arms straightened, wounds pulled away.  The exterior wall behind him had buckled.  He smiled at Lucy, teeth white.  Verona watched Lucy’s back.  The pregnant women he’d had in his room were still there, lurking behind them.  It wouldn’t take much for them to draw a gun.

“That was for the cat.  Verona’s demand.  A stubborn friend of ours had to go tell her what the janitor found in the trash.  Now let’s talk about Kennet.”

“Let’s,” the Family Man said.

“Kennet is protected.  We made rules simple and pretty fair, I think.  You broke the rules.  A friend told me the lines you crossed and the way you terrorized people would say a lot about you.  You came after us in Kennet, so I come after you here.  But I’m not interested in escalating things.  This can’t be a back and forth or Kennet and Kennet Below won’t survive.”

“I think you underestimate our ability to survive.  Humans are resilient.  Some will always survive, we’ll breed, we’ll war again, and the strongest will emerge.”

“That’s dumb,” Verona said.  “That last bit.  Dumb.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

“I, the first witch of Kennet, will lay a curse on you, Family Man.  To strangle your seed, to make your flesh soft when desire runs hard.  It’s a pretty basic curse that gets a lot of use, as I’m sure you can imagine.  Can’t have you hurting anyone else. Seems like it’d hit you where it hurts, given your whole thing.”

“I think my flesh is stronger than your curse.”

“I will lay a second curse on you tonight.  To weaken your will to fight and see your ritual through.  The bloodless faint heart.  Let the idea of blood make you shaky.  Let the sight of it make you faint.  You send your men to do your dirty work?  That’s cowardly.”

“These curses seem lesser, don’t they?” he asked.

“And finally, a curse of Lorn Address.  Let your words struggle to find purchase.  The more you speak, the less will be heard.”

“You’re trying to take my ability to lead from me, witch?”

“No.  We’re making an example.  Emphasis on we.  Did you think?  First witch of Kennet here.  Third witch of Kennet there.”

Verona waggled her fingers.

“Have you finally brought the second?  I could destroy you all in one night.”

“She’s busy.  But she’s here in spirit.  See, what she’s been doing is building connections, making friends, and keeping them.  One of those friends is an augur.  We talked to her a bit tonight.  Nicolette’s agreed to back up the Bitter Street Witch.  An apprenticeship.  Elevating her, expanding her talents.  Pending Nicolette’s approval, she gets an apprentice, bit of help with stuff, the Witch of Bitter Street gets lessons.  Turning a talent into a real power.”

“And for making that connection we got a teeny little favor from her,” Verona said.  “Pinpointing your location.”

“How good for you.”

The Family Man surged to his feet, standing, hurrying forward-

A shard of glass impaled his foot.  It broke off as he fell. A bear trap beneath the carpet caught his hand.

Footspur’s presence flowed out from the stick charm Lucy had laid down.

“We made other deals.  Your whole stunt today inspired us to change a rule.  The council of Others agreed- what they were building before is dead, the rule only existed because of that plan.  Now we’re letting some friendly practitioners in.  We need the help, and we have stuff to offer them.  An apprentice for Nicolette.  Some preliminary involvement with a goblin market so a goblin raider princess will stop in on her way elsewhere…”

“Raising a little heck where we need some heck,” Verona added.

“…Taking some tricky items off the hands of a friend who can’t otherwise get rid of them, for that market, for when it gets started.  Someone will probably buy them.”

“Is this supposed to mean something to me?” he asked.

“It means that while you’re a little bit cursed and picking up the pieces from tonight, all your opposition on this side of Kennet is getting rewarded for not being as shitty as you are,” Lucy told him.

“Provided they stop tolerating you, providing you any and all goods, blah, blah, blah,” Verona added.

“Be prepared to fight every step of the way from here on out,” Lucy told him.

He snorted.  He pulled his hand free of the bear trap, leaving the flesh of his hand behind, and let the stump slowly regenerate into a new hand as he climbed to his feet yet again.  Every shift of his footing saw fresh traps unfold.  A blade stabbing up from below.  Razor wire ensnaring one ankle.

“Three witches of Kennet,” Verona told him.  “Lucy handles things in the moment, Avery handles them in the flanks, and me?  I hang back and then show people how I’m really good at practice.  Normally I’d have something clever up my sleeve, but…”

“We’re not killing you, and we’re not trying to be clever.  We’re destroying you,” Lucy told him.

Verona showed him the sanguine stone and the full page of the spell book she’d covered in runework.  The lines glowed.

He broke into another run, tearing razor wire out of the wall, stepping on glass with bare feet, onto a hot coal that burned its way free from beneath the carpet just in time to be stepped on, and embeded in bloody flesh.

Verona threw the card.  Lucy swept up the carefully arranged bundle of sticks so Footspur wouldn’t be hurt or caught up in it, pulling the spirit back.

The Doom had damaged the wall.  The spell card produced a diagram that hung in the air, that detonated with prejudice.  The bedroom was blown out, window shattered, exterior wall damaged, and the already damaged wall broke as a body was flung through it.

It wouldn’t kill the Family Man.  He was, for all injuries to his flesh, immortal.

He would burn, and he would take time to heal.  The fire would help slow that healing, hopefully.  It would hopefully buy them time.

Verona touched Lucy’s arm.  Lucy nodded.  She helped Grandfather to his feet, then they hurried downstairs.

Doe and Pipes had gone out.  Their guns flashed with gunfire out in the night.  Some of the Family Man’s people answered with gunfire of their own.  They had some wardings, but Lucy didn’t want to test how strong those were.

She’d told the Family Man she’d curse him.  Now, as he lay burning, flesh rippling as he sorted it out, she got the papers out.

Verona pulled her bag around, and handed Lucy the power source.

“Don’t use too much,” Verona told Lucy.  “We can use it for other things.”

“Five percent?” Lucy asked.

Verona nodded.

With the battery of power liberated from the realm collector Thea in Thunder Bay, Lucy powered each curse as she laid it.  Simple curses, but she didn’t mind.  With enough power, even if the diagram work and words could be eaten or wiped away, the curse would linger, set in deep.

“I wish I could gainsay you right now,” Verona told the Family Man.  “Because I don’t think those will come off just because you’re good at getting boners and your flesh is twisted in some fancy way.”

Matthew called back the Doom that had been holding back many of the Family Man’s forces.  They retreated, leaving the Family Man alive but cursed, burned, and in as disadvantageous a position as he’d been in, his people closing in to try to answer the threat now, only to find their leader in that state.

They crossed the bridge, the goblins and ghouls catching up as they got there.  Halfway through, the Foreman waited with his forces.  A giant of a man, blunted in features, hair and eyebrows burned off from exposure to heat.  His flesh was lightly scarred with faint burns in most places, and those burns set in deeper elsewhere, with bits of metal embedded in the scar tissue.  His teeth were metal.

“No kids.  If any want to surrender, you let them surrender,” Lucy told him.  “And don’t kill the Family Man.  It’s important he’s ruined and that people see it.”

The Foreman gave her a look of raw contempt.  “He’ll come back.  He’s not the kind of guy a little girl like you wants coming back at her.”

“Teenager, and maybe.  But if we killed him someone else would pick up where he left off.  We’ll keep an eye on things, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” the Foreman replied.  “You should be though.”

“It’s a message, and the message is more important than the short rest we’d get from offing him,” Lucy told him.  “Are you going to fulfill your end of it?  Because he and his people need to know crossing us means you won’t get any rest.  You’ll be destroyed.  You don’t screw with Kennet, above or below.”

“You find the chink in the armor and set up the chisel?  Yeah, I’ll swing the hammer.”

“Get swinging, guy,” Verona told him.

He whistled, pointing.  All of his people, many in improvised armor with sheet metal welded into shapes to loosely fit around body parts, strapped on or bolted on with leather and hinges, some with guns, some with workshop tools as weapons, others with workshop-made cannons that looked like they might blow up in people’s hands if they fired.

They crossed into the Family Man’s territory.

You don’t screw with Kennet, above or below, Lucy thought, as she looked toward the island at the center of Kennet.  Even though it wasn’t red, the light that bounced off it cast red reflections in the water.

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